Kenny's Loggin' – Burnt Stuff

Feb 22, 2024 - one year ago

On the steel spar crew it was the landing man’s or chasers’ unofficial job to have a fire in the landing.

Kenny's Loggin' - Burnt Stuff — *H-444 after the unfortunate accident left it burnt. Photo courtesy Bill Stewart Collection.*

Grapple yarding and loading crews had a crummy to keep the saws and stuff in. He was to make sure there were enough seats for everybody. At lunch the crew would dry their gloves and maybe toast a sandwich. The chaser would build a toasting stick out of a forked branch. Weave some haywire back and forth at the fork to form a basket to set your sandwich in or pizza. Sometimes the fire was a bit hot and you burnt your sandwich, but you ate it anyway because that’s all you had and later on when you burped a cloud of charcoal smoke came out. On Fridays everyone would bring something to share with the crew. We liked it when somebody brought some of the big game they had shot. Lots of times you would bring a can of soup to put on the engine manifold of the machine to heat up and it exploded. Or one time Wally Johnston put something in tinfoil on the manifold. He had grabbed his daughter’s watermelon and she had a cold pork chop for lunch.

Two towers were working in Big Tree 20, the J-77 was in front of the J-48. Bob Eliason on the L-323 was loading out of the back tower. We couldn’t yard because we didn’t want to block the road for the logging truck. We went up to the standing timber and got a fire going. Brian MacKenzie had hung the block and strap on a large yellow cedar tree. There was a bit of a hole in the bottom where we got some dry stuff to get the fire going. Standing by the fire warming up our gloves, we are looking at the fire, glancing at the hole in the tree and grinning. Pretty soon we scooped the burning embers into the hole. It was so foggy and rainy that it was hard to see the top of the tree. When the fog cleared you could see it was about one hundred feet high with a broken top. Pretty soon smoke started coming out of the top. The fire at the bottom was really burning it was starting to melt the grease out of the haul back strap. We blew the whistle for strawline but the operator and chaser were in the bus, ignoring our whistles. One of us had to run down to the landing and let them know what was going on. We had the strawline back pretty quick once they saw the flames shooting out of the top. We got the block moved and hung on another tree and moved over to where we could see the fire. After a bit flames started shooting out of the top and then the top third burnt off and fell to the ground. Foreman Harold Brownson drove into the landing looked up the hill and then left the setting he never said anything to us about it. When we got back the next day there was a huge hole in the ground.

It’s a Friday evening, I’m sitting at home and I have the scanner on. I have some logging frequencies and cops channels on it. I can hear the afternoon shop crew on there. They were talking about a fire out on the MS-Hookup road. Turned out it was a yarder on fire. Next morning I went out and took some pictures. Apparently someone had left a lit cigarette in the cedar debris on the ground around the yarder. Skip Feller on the L-324 had to assist in getting the tower down and loaded up for transport.

Another burnt offering was the H-444 logging truck. It was entering a corner as it was proceeding to the dump when it met a crew bus. Bus came to a stop short of the corner and truck proceeded to pass. Inside shoulder of the road gave out causing the trailer to roll, taking the truck with it. It burnt also!!

Ken Wilson worked in the logging industry in B.C. for over 50 years. Ken is a regular contributor to Supply Post newspaper with his column “Kenny’s Loggin’”, and resides on Vancouver Island, B.C.